TNW First Look: The Bloggie video camera from Sony

One of the first things to catch my eye as I entered the New Media Room from Sony was this really slick looking camera. It’s called a Bloggie, and it’s laser focused at the video blogging market.

Of course, there are the options such as the Zi8 from Kodak, and the ever-impressive line from Flip, but Sony has a great looking entry.

Here’s a quick video look, and then we’ll talk more about it after that:

Bloggie, as I said, is aimed directly at the social media market. If you’re a video blogger, then there are no shortages of portable, usb-driven cameras out there. Bloggie doesn’t offer a lot of new features from anything else on the market, but it’s a slim and sexy choice with great battery life that should definitely be on your radar.

The twist of the Bloggie is in the software. While you can plug it into your computer and access the files directly via a mass storage mode, the software can automatically upload your pre-selected pictures directly to the social media site of your choice. Whether that’s Facebook, Flickr, YouTube or even your own site, there are settings for each and they’re really simple to use.

For Mac users, there is a bit of limited function, but we can still import photos via iPhoto or movies via iMovie. Of course, mass storage mode works as well so that’s still a great option (and the one that I chose to use for this video).

Quality, overall, is good but not the best we’ve seen. The videos that it records are great, but photo quality is a touch lacking. You’ll need some pretty decent light to get good photos, and a dedicated camera is still a much better option. Here’s a side-by-side, from the Kodak that we talked about a couple of months ago, and then from the Sony:

As you can see, the dedicated Kodak smokes the Sony in low light image quality. Higher light conditions, however, are still fine.

So there’s your wrap up. For $200, it’s still a good buy and the video quality is pretty impressive. We’ll be keeping an eye on the Bloggie, and let you know more when it’s available.